Chapter One

Samantha (Sammy) Ledford double-checked the notes to be sure she hadn't read the delivery form wrong. Heading an art gallery had seemed like a great job opportunity when she'd accepted it and made the move to the area a month back, but if these types of surprises were the norm, she wasn't sure she'd made the right choice.

New York City had been her home. It was all she'd known. Savannah seemed like another planet compared to the hustle and bustle of New York. Everything moved slower in Savannah. No one seemed to be in much of a hurry to do anything.

It drove her nuts.

She was the type who liked to get up early and have everything checked off the day's to-do list before eight in the morning. Since moving to the South, she'd learned many things weren't even open at eight. She was also told more than once that she talked fast.

Frankly, she didn't see it.

And then there was the whole bit about everyone waving and smiling at her when she was out and about. People being nice wasn't something she was accustomed to. Weirdly, it sort of freaked her out.

But it was moments like the current one that made her really miss the city and the job she'd left behind in exchange for a higher-paying position, better job title, and lower cost of living. The cramped apartment that she'd grossly overpaid for —and came with two roommates who were the worst—and the nonstop grind seemed like heaven in comparison to what her last couple of weeks had been.

Her new apartment was spacious and picture perfect, but the girl next door kept dropping by to be neighborly or something. The first time, she'd shown up with a pound cake, and the next it had been a casserole, something Sammy wouldn't know how to make if her life depended on it. Then it was just to say hello.

It was downright unnerving, since she'd never once met any of the other people in her apartment building in New York.

She silently wished herself back to the big city, even adding a click of her heels for good measure, but nothing happened.

She was still in the loading area in the back of the building the gallery was located in. And she was still stuck dealing with the fact the wrong item had arrived in place of a piece that was required for the upcoming exhibition, one she'd spent a lot of time and effort curating. Not to mention the South's version of Laurel and Hardy had brought said wrong item. To make matters worse, no amount of explaining as much was sinking in with them.

She'd tried everything, including showing them photos of the item that was supposed to have arrived, as well as that item's Certificate of Authenticity.

Nope.

She might as well have been trying to explain the intricate workings of brain surgery, not that she even knew them. Still, it would have been as effective. At the very least the two men she was explaining it to might have shown something in the way of interest.

As it stood, they did not.

They pretty much looked bored and slightly annoyed.

Her gaze went to the larger of the two delivery men. He, like his partner, was dressed in a pair of dingy, dark gray coveralls. The patch sewn onto the front right chest area announced they were from "Al's Moving Company."

Whoever Al was, he had a very lax policy on personal hygiene for his employees, as noted by the mustard stains dotting a line down the man's coveralls, before stopping at his thigh.

"I need to try to reach the artist again," she said, having already tried three times since their arrival. The artist was locked away for the weekend in his version of meditation and reflection in preparation for the exhibit.

"Miss, you've already tried to get in touch with him," said the large male.

His partner, who had somehow managed to rock a combover and slick it down with what smelled like bacon grease, from the close proximity she had to him, was currently picking something out from between his teeth with the nail on his pinkie finger.

The same finger he'd been using to hold the very clipboard that was in her possession.

Sammy made a mental note to scrub her hands the second they left, but first things first. She needed to deal with the elephant in the room. Or rather, the massive stone statue of a hot guy, who was in form-fitting jeans that were undone in front. It was borderline erotic, with its pose and the man's body, yet his groin was technically fully covered.

Barely.

If the artist had used a real-life model to sculpt from, Sammy wanted to meet him because he was almost too good to be true. Never had she seen a male specimen as pristine as the one depicted in the statue, and she'd been around some hot guys in her time.

Also, there was something about the statue that left her feeling a little giddy, almost schoolgirl- like. She couldn't stop stealing peeks at it. Had she been bashful, she'd have felt slight guilt over the matter. As it stood, the statue was the hottest thing she'd been around lately, and if he counted in the male department, the best date she'd had as well.

Since he was stone and not real, that was saying something about her run of bad luck in the male department.

"The thing is, I don't think this is the right item. It doesn't match what I have on my list or what I was told was coming."

They didn't look like they cared.

"See, this can't be right," she said, managing to pull her thoughts together before they went straight to the gutter. "I'm expecting a metal sculpture. That isn't metal. And the one I'm expecting is supposed to be an abstract representation of the plight of the modern woman. I showed you the picture and the scale model of the exhibit. Nothing about that statue says plight of women. Not to mention, it's huge. The dimensions I have listed for the one I'm supposed to have are nowhere near this size."

The deliverymen shared a look and shrugged at the same time.

Combover Guy pointed to the order form in her hand. "You gotta sign for it so we can leave it, miss."

"But you can't leave it," she protested for what felt like the hundredth time but was more like the fifth or sixth. "It's not the right item."

"Listen, miss," said the other man, sounding exasperated but still polite because of his Southern accent and use of the word "miss" in place of "lady" like she was sure his New York counterpart would have used. "The sender paid a lot of money to get it shipped fast and in one piece. We did like we promised. Do your part. Sign the paper so we can go home. It's way after our normal delivery hours as it is. No one is at the main office to sort this out right now anyways. They won't be back in the office until Monday morning."

"Yeah," added Combover Guy. "We already missed the game to get this over to you."

His buddy grunted. "I had money on that game. Lost my backside."

"I told you not to take that bet. I said it ain't worth it," argued Combover Guy.

Having heard more than enough of whatever gambling issue they'd incurred, Sammy let out a frustrated growl and signed her name to the paper. She then thrust the clipboard back at Combover Guy and waited as he tore off the carbon copy, handing it to her. She didn't really want to touch anything else that he did since he'd been picking his teeth.

Combover Guy went to the tow motor that was parked behind the massive crate, got on it, put it in reverse, and began to back up toward the ramp at the open loading bay door. The moving truck was backed up to the spot with a ramp extended. The man backed over the ramp like he'd done it a million times prior. Before she knew it, he and the piece of machinery were on the truck.

Sammy lunged forward, with her arms out. As she realized they fully intended to leave the giant statue where it was, right smack-dab in the center of the loading area, which was nowhere near the exhibit display space, she panicked. "No! You can't leave him, erm, it there. I can't move it to the main room by myself. It's still mostly boxed. Look at me. How in the world am I supposed to move it?"

She wasn't being dramatic. She stood just over five feet tall. The statue was well over a foot taller.

The larger of the men gave her a look that said he didn't much care about her plight but didn't want her to continue to shout over the beeping of the tow motor. He waved a hand in her direction, and then balled his fist and hit the side of the wooden crate. Backing up, he watched as the remaining three sides fell to the floor with a loud thud.

Sammy jolted in place, staring at the mass of packing material surrounding the statue. "That's it? What am I supposed to do with it now?"

"No offense, miss, it's your problem now. You signed for it," said the man with a grin before he turned and followed Combover Guy toward the ramp. He gave her another partial smile before he pushed the ramp back into their delivery truck and waited for his buddy to hop off the back before closing it.

The men were in their truck and pulling away before she could dare to comment again.

"Butt-munches," she said, only partially under her breath. Come Monday morning, Al, whoever he might be, was going to get an earful from her. She might very well show up on Al's doorstep to lodge a complaint.

She went to the bay door and stared up at it, wondering how she'd even reach it to pull it down. There was a strap affixed to it, but it was too high for her to get to with any ease.

Leaving the rolling door standing open wasn't an option. There were far too many things in the gallery to risk exposing them to theft. And in New York, if she dared leave an area exposed, by morning nothing would be in the joint.

The men who normally helped in the loading area were off for the night and not due back in until Monday morning. She'd been told the item coming was small enough to move herself and fit on a tabletop. There hadn't been a need to have the guys put in extra time, or so she'd thought.

Nothing about the statue she was staring at would fit on any table she'd ever seen. She was almost certain the statue wasn't the correct piece for the show. But with the sheer number of times the eccentric artist had already changed up the pieces he was showing in the exhibit, this might very well be the new focal point. Her luck, she'd get yet another email from the man, who fancied himself a feminist, demanding a change of something else as well.

She was too drained to deal with him and doubted very much he'd break his weekend of silence to respond to her calls. Just as well, she'd be likely to commit a felony if she was face-to-face with the man. An overwhelming amount of time, planning, and press releases had gone into the exhibit. The buzz was amazingly high. So were her stress levels.

The show must go on.

Now she just needed to find a way to secure the statue and the gallery.

The more she stared at the massive stone piece, the more she realized one of the man's thighs were nearly as wide as her waist. There was no denying the man depicted in the statue was physically fit. She wished real men came like that.

She'd order a matching set.

"The artist sculpted Hercules in jeans," she said with a shake of her head as she went to the bay door. Once there, she proceeded to jump up and down in vain, attempting to reach the pull- down door strap.

It didn't work.

Not that she really expected it to.

She was half tempted to tap into the side of herself that just might be able to achieve the impossible and close the damn door. Doing so would mean unleashing a part of her that she didn't entirely trust, not to mention risk exposing her secret to the world.

That, and she had nearly no control over it all.

Making things float and shooting electricity from her body sounded cool in theory, but really had no helpful uses. At least none that she'd ever found.

It would be just her luck to find out there were security cameras on one of the other buildings that could pick up the area and its happenings. Explaining away what she could do, if it was caught on film, wasn't something she wanted to try to do again.

She'd already dealt with that enough in New York.

It wasn't like she'd meant to use what she could do. It had just sort of happened. Her last boss had been very handsy and didn't want to take no for an answer. He'd cornered her in an elevator after a cocktail party, where he'd tied on too many drinks. For some reason, he'd felt the fact he was inebriated justified his behavior and entitled him to try to take what he wanted.

She and the abilities that she'd been born with had other things in mind.

One second the man had her pinned to the wall of the elevator, and the next he was shot back as electricity arced between them—lifting him up and off the floor before slamming him into the other side of the elevator.

And her crummy luck had left it caught on tape. She still wasn't sure how she'd gotten lucky enough to have the tape go missing after the fact, but they had.

Thankfully, everyone had attributed her boss's account of the ordeal to the amount of liquor he'd consumed, so they hadn't believed him. That hadn't stopped him from turning into a creepy stalker, convinced she was a witch. More than once she'd found him lurking outside of her apartment building after work hours. He was downright unbearable to be around during the workday.

She'd been left no choice but to seek another job.

That was for the best. It had been past the time for her to expand her horizons.

She'd basically lucked into this job and wanted it to work out.

"I'm not repeating that," she said to herself as she stared up at the rolling door.

Frustrated and tired after putting in long hours for days in preparation for the showing next week, she slipped off her four-inch-high heels and winged one at the door. All it did was bounce back at her.

While the gallery had ladders, they were currently locked in the storage room, just off the loading bay. And it was the one room that she'd yet had duplicate keys made. So, as it currently stood, the key was with the man who normally worked in the area.

Not with her. No key meant no ladders.

A line of colorful and inventive curses fell free from her lips as she caught her heel with one hand.

It was already after ten. There was no way she was going to be able to find anyone who could move the statue for her or help close the door. She was on her own at least until morning. Even then she wasn't entirely sure how many employees she'd be able to track down on a Saturday morning, especially since she'd given them all some much needed time off before the big show.

When the brilliant idea to grant time off had hit her, she'd been attempting to sway them all since she was still new to being their boss. The last person who ran the gallery had been referred to as "particular" more than once and, from what Sammy could gather, wasn't liked much by the staff. It hadn't taken her long to realize "particular" was code for "bitch" in Southern speak.

She'd hoped to have a different working relationship with everyone. And since the only thing left for the show was the tabletop-size metal sculpture, she didn't think she'd need anyone on staff for the weekend.

Had she realized just how massive the piece really was, and that it was anything but metal, she'd have had men there ready to move it to its spot in the main gallery showing room. At the very least, she'd have worn clothing made for trying to handle things herself. Not the form- fitting red dress that came to a stop just above her mid-thigh.

Her attention returned to the massive stone statue of the hot guy. "Seriously, how in the heck do you represent the plight of women?"

For a second, she half expected the thing to answer her—it was that lifelike. She liked to think she was fairly well-versed in the world of art, having a degree in art history and experience at one of New York's biggest galleries, but she couldn't recall a time she'd ever seen a sculpture that was so realistic.

The man depicted in the statue had hair that hung just past his ears and was wavy. The artist had even managed to re-create facial hair on the thing. If that wasn't enough detail, every ripple of muscle on the man's body was visible as he was shown in mid-run, an arm extended. Apparently, the model had been instructed to run from the bedroom or something because his pants were dangerously close to showing all there was to see.

Not that Sammy would have complained had the artist opted to forgo the jeans. In fact, part of her was a bit disappointed the thing wasn't shown nude.

The harder she stared at it, the more her hormones took notice. With a wry grin, she licked her lips. "Okay, so my plight in the dating department would be advanced with a guy like that in my bed, but beyond that, I'm not seeing the correlation to the exhibit."

Chapter Two

ABEL SAT in the back of a cramped unmarked van as his tactical team finished gearing up. They'd been there for the greater part of an hour and with their size, it was making for tight quarters.

It didn't help that he kept smelling rotting food, though he'd checked the van thoroughly for the source. Still, the scent lingered, clinging to his nose, making his stomach uneasy. Twice already he'd sniffed himself, wondering if it was him. Since it seemed to be coming from everywhere, he couldn't pinpoint exactly who or what it was.

But if he had to spend much longer in the van, he might just lose his shit.

Their target had only just arrived at the pickup location some twenty minutes earlier and they were waiting for the go signal to make their move. The mission was fairly cut and dry. Observe, oversee, and then extract the target.

In theory, it would require no show of strength or weapons, yet they'd been ordered to have both at the ready. Plus, it wasn't his first time around the block; he knew better than to leave anything to chance. He'd not come as far as he had by being careless.

And too many things had lined up perfectly, presenting this golden opportunity to seize the target, to leave anything to chance.

His team, six counting himself, was comprised of men who had found themselves in the same situation as him. They'd all had military training in their past and each had been serving on death row or had life sentences in maximum-security prisons with no chance of parole. The charges varied from person to person, but it all boiled down to them being a hardened lot. Nearly all of them had killed at least one person. Some many, many more than that. As such was the case with him.

Serial.

That's what they'd referred to him as.

Abel had been studied by doctors all through his trial and told he lacked empathy and the capacity to ever have any. They hadn't told him anything he hadn't already known.

Hearing his victims beg for their lives had given him something of a rush. And he missed that. Missed getting to test the limits of what a human body could sustain. Missed seeing the fear in their eyes and hearing them try to barter for more time—to be set free.

It was freedom he only granted in the form of death.

The Corporation knew of his past, knew of his crimes, and everything he'd done to his victims. They even knew of all the victims the prosecution had never linked to him. They knew of the ones he'd killed overseas while serving briefly in the military before receiving a dishonorable discharge.

Abel wasn't sure how they'd figured it all out or where they'd gotten their data, but it had been scarily accurate.

They knew of his upbringing. Of his father who had also been a murderer. He'd trained Abel, teaching him how to stalk his prey and what to do to get the most pleasure from the act of killing someone. The satisfaction came from the torture, not the final act. Prolonging it was like holding off an orgasm.

The Corporation had known that intimate detail as well. It had been unnerving at first to hear everything they knew of him. But then he'd grown curious about them and their end game. When a representative, who came in the form of an attorney whom Abel neither requested nor retained, had shown up at the prison to meet with him, Abel had known there was an angle.

Nothing good in life came without strings.

At first, he'd refused the assistance offered to him, thinking The Corporation was another of the bleeding-heart organizations filled with fools who thought a cold-blooded murderer such as himself could be reformed.

The idea was laughable.

He was and would always be a killer at heart.

And that was fine by him.

It wasn't until the attorney came back for another visit, this time with another person in tow, with additional information, that Abel began to truly listen to what they were offering him.

A chance at freedom.

The cost was simple.

Do their bidding.

Easy enough, especially since that included getting to torture and kill others.

And when they'd revealed that his father had been associated with them, having participated in a similar opportunity that had started before Abel's birth even, he'd gotten onboard.

Until his death when Abel was thirteen, his father had been in league with The Corporation. They had files upon files on him. Hell, they even had taped interviews with him discussing his crimes, taking great joy in what he'd done. His father had bragged to the person doing the interviewing that he was molding his son to follow in his footsteps.

And the interviewer had encouraged Abel's father. Telling him additional ways to better train Abel. That all of the money and time they'd invested into his father would pay off in the form of his son.

Watching the recorded footage had been surreal.

He'd never felt so connected to someone as he had his father when he was alive. That had been ripped from him when his father had died. Getting back a taste of it via the tapes had given Abel all the signs he needed to agree to whatever The Corporation wanted from him.

Once transferred to a new facility, Abel had been shown additional taped footage. This time of someone he'd never met before, yet felt an instant connection to. In fact, he felt a stronger bond to the man in the tapes than he had his own father.

Former Immortal Operative Wheeler Summerbee.

Apparently, they were distant relatives. Normally, that wouldn't mean much, but Abel and his family were special.

Different from others.

Their darkness wasn't simply a drive to kill. No, they had supernatural DNA in their bloodline. Minute traces but enough that it could be used and manipulated.

That was what The Corporation had done. They'd taken that base and built upon it.

They'd tried with his father, but ultimately failed. The result had been his father's passing, which had been made to look like natural causes. But they'd been candid with Abel, telling him the truth. They'd had a hand in his father's death. That his father hadn't been strong enough to withstand the brutal testing and procedures.

That he'd not been man enough.

But Abel was.

His death had been faked and the government thought he was no longer an issue. That the inmate who had been serving a life sentence was now dead, all traces of him wiped away from the records at a later date.

The Corporation had started first with plastic surgery on Abel and the others like him, altering their appearances enough that they couldn't be recognized while in public. Then they'd begun the in-depth testing. The painfully long and arduous procedures that resulted in the death of many of the candidates.

He'd been strapped down, in immeasurable pain, his body reacting violently to the introduction of foreign DNA manipulation, watching as others around him suffered as well. That had been what had gotten him through it all—the ability to see the pain inflicted upon the others around him. Many had died.

Abel saw it as weeding out the weak.

Those unfit for the gift The Corporation was bestowing upon them.

Immortality and the ability to be far more than a mundane human.

He was basically a god now.

Nearly unstoppable.

Except for one flaw—his body, which they'd sworn would go on for hundreds of years, was starting to reject the genetic engineering.

The introduced DNA from another supernatural had been exhilarating at first, giving him increased senses of smell, eyesight, and hearing. Then he'd developed strength the likes of which he'd never seen. That was followed quickly by the ability to sprout fangs, but that came at a price.

Blood.

He required it to survive.

They swore to him that he wasn't a vampire, which he saw as the weakest of the supernaturals, since daylight could do them in. But the need to survive depended greatly on him either drinking blood or receiving transfusions.

Without it, he grew weak and, worse yet, began to turn into something that was a cross between a lizard and a bat.

He'd seen his reflection once during an episode and the imagery had never left him. He'd been both horrified and fascinated. After all, it was as if he'd been stripped down to a baser form.

A raw killer.

He could have lived with that.

But recently, he'd started to have issues in the sun as well, making him no better than a vampire. His limbs would stiffen, and twice his arm had started to turn into something that could only be labeled stone.

Another side effect of the testing.

Apparently, it had all triggered the curse of his family line. The gargoyle in his system. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined gargoyles were real. That they existed.

But they did.

He was living proof.

And he wasn't alone.

When Abel had first learned he'd been cut from an existing cloth, that of Wheeler, he'd wanted to meet the man. Wanted to see for himself whose DNA had been used to alter him. He'd seen the footage of Wheeler being held and tested on. He'd read the files and copious amounts of information The Corporation had on the man.

He'd longed to have introductions, if for no other reason than to see who of them was the better predator.

Who was the best killer?

Over the past decade, since Abel had first undergone the testing and began serving The Corporation as a mercenary, he'd spent time searching for Wheeler, wanting to go head to head with the blueprint of his life.

But Wheeler had been a ghost.

Never staying in one place long.

The man was known as an Immortal Outcast. Something the government engineered during its Immortal Ops Program, fucked up in some fashion, and then tried to hide.

The Outcast Network was vast and deeply embedded in the paranormal underground. The men who had managed to survive the testing that had claimed the lives of most, and evade capture by their government, had gone to ground. But they still worked in secret, helping one another with issues that arose.

Within the last year or so, everything had changed.

The Corporation had begun to make its play.

They'd come out of the darkness and began positioning themselves to eventually take over the country and the world. They were doing a damn fine job of things as it was.

Peace was a notion that barely existed in the world. Starting a small war in a foreign country had a ripple effect that was felt around the globe. And then there was the fact they were embedded in nearly every government in every country there was. They had men and women working for them in every field one could think, loyal to the cause.

There would come a point when The Corporation stopped hiding the truth of what was out there—things that were more than human—and they'd turn humans into the cattle they were born to be.

It would be glorious.

Someone on the other side, the one that dared to call itself good, had already started laying the groundwork by releasing the truth about the Immortal Ops testing that had taken place. The information that eugenics wasn't just a Nazi thing during World War II. It had a rich, longstanding history with large ties to America. And it had never stopped.

From his understanding, it was still going on to this very day by both The Corporation and the side of good. Though the side of good went out of their way to keep it all under wraps and clean up the information leaked by someone among them.

The Corporation was well funded and secured in its place among the cogwheels of the world. They were positioned to take over at some point. They just needed to work out a few kinks.

Namely, many of their test subjects (who were also called hybrids), like Abel, were malfunctioning.

The Corporation claimed they could help fix what was going wrong with Abel. But they needed to study the source DNA closer. That meant they needed Wheeler back in their custody.

When Wheeler had suddenly surfaced in Georgia, Abel thought his problems had been solved. But then the Outcasts had begun working closely with their former counterparts from Paranormal Security and Intelligence (PSI) and the Paranormal Regulators (Para-Regs). And the government had stopped hunting the Outcasts to focus more on trying to combat The Corporation. That left the Outcasts coming out of the woodwork to aid one another.

It had made it far more difficult than Abel liked to get his hands on Wheeler. That was, until three days ago, when word reached The Corporation that Wheeler had been involved in an altercation with someone loyal to the cause and had been turned to stone. Even better than that, his own people had foolishly decided to ship him in statue form to one of their headquarters, rather than transport him themselves.

They'd apparently gone as far as to get him instated as a full-fledged PSI operative, under the Shadow Agents Division, to protect him should the government learn of his whereabouts and have a change of heart on hunting him.

Now, with the protection of PSI, he was in theory no longer a fugitive and considered a valuable asset rather than a liability.

Abel wasn't sure who in the hell Wheeler was friends with in PSI, but whoever it was, they were high up and had a lot of pull and clearance. Plus they had the balls to stand in direct opposition to their own government.

But they'd been arrogant, thinking that by having him brought on as a Shadow Agent, he'd somehow be protected from The Corporation and its reach.

The idea was laughable, especially since those loyal to the cause were intrenched deep within the PSI organization and most of its offshoots. Very little went on within the organizations that The Corporation wasn't aware of or didn't, in some fashion orchestrate.

Armed with the information about Wheeler's statue form being shipped by normal human means of transit, and by actual humans, The Corporation had set in motion a plan to retrieve him.

That was where Abel and his team of men came in. The Corporation had seen to it the statue was rerouted to a place of their choosing and delivered at a time they selected. They'd then scrubbed the records so that any who came looking for Wheeler who were with PSI would not be able to locate him.

The plan had gone over perfectly.

That was how Abel had come to be in a van outside of an art gallery in Savannah. And it was how he was going to get the answers he wanted and the help he required.

"Can we go now?" asked one of his men as he rocked in place, looking eager as they sat nearly shoulder to shoulder in the back of the van.

Abel shot him a hard look. "We go when they say we can."

"You think because you did a little time in the military that you're better than us," said the man, mouthing off from what he thought was the safety of the other end of the van.

Abel could and would kill the bastard with ease.

The rest of the team stared with wide eyes at Abel before quickly averting their gazes. They knew how volatile his temper was. And how willing he was to kill for both pleasure and to simply no longer have to listen to someone annoying speak.

Abel let his fangs distend from his gums as he permitted his darkness to rise. He knew then his eyes had filled with black. "I think I'm better than you because I am better than you. Care to see by how much?"

Wisely, the man shook his head and avoided direct eye contact.

"Now that we have that out of the way, where are we with the delivery men?" he asked. "Are they still there?"

The man nearest the back window gazed out. "They're almost gone. But we can take 'em."

"Why would we? They're on our payroll. And we go when we get the green light, and the people in charge want it to be just the female and the target," returned Abel.

"Why? What's so special about the human woman?" asked another.

Abel didn't bother to hide his smile. "I have no idea, but I'm sure we'll find out soon enough."